Christine Sinclair, Canada’s greatest soccer player, faces down the World Cup

She is among Canada’s greatest athletes in history, and possibly its most dominant. At her pinnacle, Christine Sinclair didn’t just control a soccer field, she dissected it the way Wayne Gretzky did the ice: more quickly and with more precision than anyone else.

She is 40 now and, in a bow to age, has had to adapt her game. She is no longer the speedy forward who outruns defenders down the field. She is more deliberate and logs fewer minutes than she has in the past. But she still remains the begrudging face of Canadian soccer, the single person who has driven the popularity of the women’s game.

Ms. Sinclair’s accomplishments are way too many to mention, but there are two that stand out above the rest: She has amassed more goals in international play than any other woman or man, and has dragged Canada’s national team from obscurity to Olympic gold, a championship feat she hopes to repeat at the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

“She continues to evolve and I think that’s a credit to Christine and the high performer and winner that she is,” Bev Priestman, the team’s coach, told journalists during a video call last week. Ms. Priestman is three years younger than Ms. Sinclair. “It’s super, super inspiring.

“What stands out to me is the level of hunger she still has after being at so many World Cups and Olympic Games. And I think when you’ve got that hunger, desire and work ethic, any player who puts on the jersey is thankful to play alongside you.”

The Canadians play their first game of the group stage against Nigeria in Melbourne Thursday night. This is their eighth World Cup and they are still in search of a medal. Their best finish was a fourth in 2003, when Sinclair scored three times. Canada’s captain enters the month-long event as one of only three players with a goal in five consecutive World Cups.

“The reality is there’s six or eight teams that can win this thing and we’re definitely one of those,” Ms. Sinclair said on the same Zoom call from Australia. “I think we have the right combination of experience and young players experiencing their first World Cup.

“It’s our first time entering a tournament as world champions so we’ve got a target on our back. We want to prove to the world that what we did in the Olympics wasn’t a one-time thing.”

Open this photo in gallery:

In her recent book Playing the Long Game: A Memoir, Ms. Sinclair writes that talking about herself has never been something she likes. Those are actually her first words, as if to accentuate how intensely private she is. Rarely has there ever been a more understated hero in sport. Little is known about her beyond the arc of her family and closest friends, and that is by design.

In the book, Ms. Sinclair reveals that she has a Canadian flag running with a soccer ball tattooed on her back, a fun and inoffensive fact.

When asked about it on the call, she cringed and put her hands over her face, clearly embarrassed.

“I got it when I was at the University of Portland,” she said tersely. “A bunch of us made a road trip up to Victoria, and I came back with a tattoo. We’ll just end it there.”

Christine Sinclair grew up in South Burnaby, B.C., and played with seven-year-olds when she was 4 and on an under-14 team at 11. Her father Bill played for the University of British Columbia and the New Westminster Blues in the Pacific Coast Soccer League and two of her uncles played for the Portland Timbers in the North American Soccer League.

Her mother Sandra coached her and her older brother Michael when they were young and served as president of the local club both played on.

Open this photo in gallery:

Ms. Sinclair joined Canada’s national team at 16 and attended the University of Portland in Oregon, where she was a four-time All-American, won two NCAA Div. I championships and twice won the Hermann Trophy, college soccer’s answer to football’s more famous Heisman.

Along with her international career, she has played for a handful of teams in professional leagues in Canada and the United States, spending the past 11 seasons with the Portland Thorns FC of the National Women’s Soccer League. Clubs she has starred on have won five league championships, and she has received Canada’s player-of-the-year award 14 times.

She has been a fixture in Canadian sports for two decades but rose significantly in prominence at the 2012 Olympics in London. A year earlier Canada had lost all three of its games in Germany in an embarrassing performance at the World Cup. In England, however, it advanced from the group stage to the knockout round before losing in the semi-finals in extra time to the United States. Ms. Sinclair scored three goals in the match but the outcome turned on two controversial calls by the referee over the last 10 minutes.

Afterward, Ms. Sinclair crumpled to the ground, angry and exhausted. During an interview she said the game had been stolen from Canada. Then, on her way to the team bus, Ms. Sinclair crossed paths with the ref and cursed at her. That led to a complaint being lodged with FIFA and the possibility that Ms. Sinclair would be suspended for the following game, which was for the bronze medal.

It wasn’t until the next day that she and her teammates discovered fans at home were outraged because they felt Canada had been cheated.

“That is when Christine revealed herself to the world and where Canadians embraced her,” said Stephen Brunt, the long-time sportswriter and broadcaster who co-authored the book with Ms. Sinclair.

She was not suspended and the Canadian women earned their first Olympic soccer medal with a 1-0 triumph over France. Ms. Sinclair dropped to her knees and cried joyfully. And for the first time Canada seemed to awaken to women’s soccer. Thousands turned out to meet her and teammates a few days later at Vancouver International Airport.

In 2016 Ms. Sinclair scored the winning goal when Canada won a second bronze medal at the Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro and in 2021 she scored during the opening match of group play in Tokyo and helped contribute to Canada’s first gold medal in women’s soccer. “I admire her as an athlete as much as anybody I have covered,” Mr. Brunt said. “When it comes to that, she is on a very short list. Olympians are kind of one-shot deals but she crosses over. She is more like a hockey player. She has a status – an it factor like Sidney Crosby, Gretzky or Mario Lemieux.”

Christine Sinclair has 190 goals in international competition, four more than the retired American Abby Wambach, 67 more than Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal, and 87 more than the Argentine Lionel Messi.

At 19, Simi Awujo is young enough to be Sinclair’s daughter. She is the second-youngest player on Canada’s team at the World Cup after fellow midfielder Olivia Smith, who is 18.

“One of the biggest things I’ve gained from playing with Christine is that I’ve learned humility,” Ms. Awujo said on a conference call. “She is never someone that wants to be in the spotlight, even though she is fully deserving. Just having that humility and carrying that grace onto the field is something that I admire about her.”

Ms. Awujo was nervous the first time she practised with Ms. Sinclair.

“I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is the legend of Canada’s soccer,’ ” she said. “It was a scary moment but she’s such a nice person that it wasn’t as scary as it could have been because she’s so welcoming. She’s such a down-to-earth person that it doesn’t matter whether she is 40 or whether she is 20.”

Jayde Riviere, a 22-year-old defender, has played internationally for Canada for four years.

“When I realized she was going to be my teammate, I had an expectation of what she would be like, like she was going to have this aura and I was going to be nervous around her,” Ms. Riviere said in a pretournament interview. “The first thing I noticed was how completely humble she is.

“Even though Canada puts her on a huge pedestal you would never know by meeting her. She seems like an ordinary person. But on the pitch, she’s clinical. When she’s on the field, she is in her own zone and oozes confidence to everyone else.”

At Ms. Riviere’s first World Cup, in 2019 in France, Ms. Sinclair gave her a pep talk before her first match.

“She came up to me after training and told me to do what I do best and that this team supports me and that she supports me,” Ms. Riviere said. “When that comes from literally the GOAT of soccer, you are full of confidence.”

Ms. Sinclair disdains interviews and when she acquiesces, remains guarded. She will talk about soccer but reveals little personal information about herself.

“She feels that what she owes people, she does on the pitch,” Mr. Brunt said.

As she grew up, Ms. Sinclair had few role models in women’s soccer other than maybe the American Mia Hamm.

At a book signing in Oshawa, Ont., several hundred girls turned out.

“That is who she does all of this for,” Mr. Brunt said.

Stephanie Labbé, a former goalie, was Ms. Sinclair’s teammate on the Canadian senior national team for a dozen years. She retired in 2022 and is now general manager of the Vancouver Whitecaps FC, which in 2025 will compete in a new Canadian women’s premier league.

Over the years, Ms. Labbé and Ms. Sinclair became good friends.

“She is a very private person, but when you get her in her comfort zone with the people she feels safe with and comfortable around, she is very genuine and down to earth. What you see on the outside – the team-first mentality – is very real and authentic.

“She is not interested in individual accolades. That is not a front.”

Christine Sinclair is 5 foot 10 and weighs 148 pounds. She has penetrating blue eyes and adores her two nieces and her dog, Charlie, a Pomeranian rescue.

She was a self-professed nerd when it came to homework, and was an Academic All-American at the University of Portland, from which she graduated with a 3.75 grade-point average and earned a degree in life sciences.

She had a soccer ball flip phone when she was younger, kept the gold-medal-clinching ball from the 2021 Olympic final, has been featured on a postage stamp, appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada and was one the first women to appear on the cover of an EA Sports video game.

Her mother worked at a bank and her dad worked in construction. Both are deceased. Bill died in 2016, four months after he was diagnosed with colon cancer; Sandra died in the spring of last year after a nearly lifelong battle with multiple sclerosis.

Ms. Sinclair’s book is dedicated to her mom, and for seven years she has been an ambassador for the MS Society of Canada.

She has endorsements with Nike, Subway, Visa and CIBC but doesn’t pursue them aggressively despite her prominence.

Brian Levine of Toronto, her agent since 2016, recalls the first time he met her. He spoke enthusiastically about his marketing expertise and partnerships and encouraged her to be more public.

“It was not her thing or a priority to her, but she recognized the importance of what it would bring to her platform,” Mr. Levine said. “I told her I would like to have her on my team and that she needed to do more of it.

“She is just starting to realize that she has an ability to drive change. It is for a higher purpose, and the stakes are higher than they have ever been.”

In March, Ms. Sinclair slammed Canada Soccer at a parliamentary hearing.

“As the popularity, interest and growth of the women’s game has swept the globe, our most painstaking battle has been with our own federation and trying to obtain fair and equitable treatment in the way we are supported,” she said.

She went on to say that the Canadian women players were shocked to find out in 2021 – the year they won Olympic gold in Tokyo – that the Canadian men earned more than five times more than they did. The Canadian men’s team hasn’t won a medal in soccer since the 1904 Olympics.

When asked by e-mail how she’d like to be remembered when her career is over, she said it would be for the fight for equality in her sport.

“I think we’ve made some good strides from when I started in terms of having female role models for the next generation to look up to but there is still a long way to go in many other areas like equal pay,” Ms. Sinclair said.

On Tuesday, a betting-information site called Oddspedia released information gathered from research: The average salary for players on Canada’s women’s World Cup team playing in their professional leagues is $159,000. The average salary for its men’s team was $1,363,000. Gender pay gap: 756 per cent.

Open this photo in gallery:

Team Canada staff have tried to persuade Ms. Sinclair to play in the Paris Olympics in 2024 but she has been non-committal.

“I have goals and aspirations, but at this point I am not willing to take the weight of the world on my shoulders,” she wrote near the end of her book. “I have always wanted to play at least a year on my pro club without having to worry about international football.

“Men retire from their national teams and keep playing for their club. That intrigues me. I am wondering if it would be possible to just be a regular player for a year. It has been in the back of my head.”

She liked the way Tom Brady handled his retirement, at least until he unretired.

“I’d like to play in a World Cup or whatever and then send out an announcement saying, ‘I am not coming back,’” she wrote.

When she retires, she will likely walk away quietly, as is her way.